This chapter continues our
exploration of technologies that incorporate the ecological
wisdom of nature. It introduces our readers to what we consider
today's most advanced and most revolutionary technologies of this
kind. The authors have been on the forefront of these
revolutionary developments for the past twenty-five years. John
Todd, visionary biologist and ecological designer, is the founder
of the now-legendary New Alchemy Institute and the Center of
Restoration of Waters at Ocean Arks international in
Massachusetts, where he has pioneered "living
technologies," and in particular the "living
machines" described in the following pages.

Nancy Jack Todd has been
active in the environmental movement for over two decades. As
cofounder of the New Alchemy Institute, editor of its journals,
vice president of Ocean Arks, and editor of their publication,
Annals of Earth, she has been the primary force behind
communicating their results to n worldwide readership. Both
authors have published numerous articles and several books on
ecological design, including most recently the jointly authored
volume, From Eco-Cities to Living Machines: Principles of
Ecological Design (1994).

This chapter is an inspiring
introduction to a novel and wonderful branch of ecological
design. As the authors explain, a living machine is a contained
ecosystem comprising hundreds, even thousands, of species of
carefully selected organisms. It is a machine, because it has
been designed and built to perform specific tasks. At the same
time, however, it is fundamentally different from conventional
machines and even from standard biotechnologies.

The design of these new,
human-created ecosystems not only in corporates all the
principles of ecology, but also uses the inherent intelligence of
the ecological community contained in the structure. Like natural
ecosystems, living machines are capable of repairing themselves,
replacing their components as they wear out, and of responding
creatively to change by "evolutionary" self-design.

Living machines have been
designed and built to produce food, heat and cool buildings,
treat wastes, and purify the air. Most astonishingly, they can
perform all of these functions simultaneously. Prototypes of
these miracles of ecological design are now being installed
throughout the United States, and in Canada, the United Kingdom,
and Australia. The authors estimate that eventually, these living
technologies will be up to 10,000 times more effective than
conventional technologies. In terms of energy and chemical
inputs, the existing examples are already ten to one hundred
times more effective.

We have included a few
photographs of living machines with the chapter, because we feel
that their strong aesthetic appeal will prove as important to
their success as the fascinating theory behind them and their
amazing economic performance. Being machines, gardens, and works
of art all rolled into one, living machines are major milestones
on the road toward sustainability.

The innumerable and
life-endangering environmental ills that currently plague us
globally and locally are the byproducts of human cultures and
technologies deeply estranged from the great natural systems of
the planet. These same systems are, ironically, the very
processes that ultimately sustain us. Edward Wilson has
calculated that humans are destroying species at an extraordinary
rate and that between twenty and fifty percent of present living
species will be extinct by the year 2025.¹ The only lasting
solution to counter this dynamic is to recreate consciously
symbiotic relationships between humanity and nature. Such
relationships demand nothing less than a fundamental
technological revolution designed to integrate advanced societies
with the natural world.

Such a revolution is well
underway. We have been involved in applied research into truly
sustainable and equitable means for supporting the peoples of the
world for more than twenty five years. Among the most encouraging
recent developments has been the invention of living technologies
that literally harness the intelligence, processes, and organisms
found in nature not only to support human society but to restore
damaged and polluted ecosystems. The component units of living
technologies, called living machines, can be designed to produce
food or fuels, to treat wastes, to purify air, to regulate
climate, and to bioremediate ravaged ecosystems. Furthermore,
they can do all of these simultaneously.

A living machine is a contained
ecosystem made up of thousands of species of selected living
organisms. Such an ecosystem is usually housed in a casing or
structure, frequently a series of cylinders, made up of
light-weight and sometimes light-transmitting materials. It is
similar to a conventional machine in that it is comprised of a
number of interrelated parts that function together to perform an
assigned task. The design is based on principles evolved over
millennia by the natural world in regulating the great ecologies
of forests, lakes, prairies, and estuaries, and the ecosystems
within ecosystems that are their component parts. Their primary
energy source is sunlight. Mirroring the metabolism of the
planet, living machines are driven by hydrological, mineral, and
climate cycles.

It must be emphasized that while
drawing on the ancient intelligence of nature, living machines
are entirely new, humanly created ecosystems. In order to build a
living machine, organisms from a vast range of sources are
collected and reassembled in any number of combinations, some of
which can prove unique. In the novel setting of the interior of
the living machine, these organisms develop into populations
co-existing often in unprecedented combinations or communities
that quickly adapt to a given assignment. Depending on the goal
of the project, the parts or living components may come from
almost any region of the planet and be recombined in a rich
variety of ways. Appropriate assembling is based on knowledge of
the niches and the natural history of the organisms that are to
make up the constituent parts, and on calculation of their
individual role amid the constellation of organisms being
incorporated by the designer.

Ultimately. it should be possible
to design living machines that are at least four orders of
magnitude more effective than conventional technologies.² In
terms of energy and external chemical inputs, our recently
developed waste treatment technologies are already two to three
orders of magnitude more effective than existing, conventional
methods.³

Much of the early research in
living technologies was undertaken to reverse and transform the
alarming and worsening state of the world's waters. All over the
earth, we have poured into formerly pristine waters such toxins
as fertilizer runoff and industrial, chemical, and human wastes.
Countless species of fish, molluscs, frogs, and amphibians
generally are or are becoming extinct. Nor are these the only
species at risk. In spewing thousands of chemicals into the
environment, we find many of them returning to us via the water
in food chains to become embedded in the cells of our bodies and
those of our children. The challenge is to develop modern support
systems with the ability to rapidly reverse this trend.

Because water is fundamental to
all living systems, the starting point is the transformation of
water-based technologies. As a substance, water is something of a
scientific freak, having the rare property of becoming denser as
a liquid than it is as a solid. This property is one of the
reasons life is possible here on Earth. If, like other chemical
substances, the solid state were denser, lakes would freeze, from
the bottom up, into great blocks of ice that would never melt.
The whole planet would be a lifeless ball of ice. The waters of
the Earth maintain in balance all of the chemical elements of the
planet and all its gases. Water is the major regulator of
climate. All land-bound life evolved from this life-giving
source. Approximately seventy per cent of the human body is
comprised of water. If, as the Russian biologist Vernadsky
claimed, water is life, the quality of water in many ways
determines the quality of life.4 Now, however, water
is becoming the source, not of life, but of illness,
debilitation, carcinoma, and death.

There is, however, a way of
reversing this seemingly irrevocable dynamic. Living machines, by
adopting and mimicking the strategies of natural systems, have
proved extraordinarily effective in detoxifying and restoring the
most severely contaminated waters.5 Based on the
premise that waste is a resource out of place and that nature
handles every form of waste by turning it into a resource, living
machines imitate the purifying and recycling abilities of natural
aquatic ecosystems. Powered by sunlight and frequently housed in
greenhouse-like structures, they contain populations of bacteria,
algae, microscopic animals, snails, fish, flowers, higher plants,
and trees. Such living machines have proved capable of advanced
water treatment without resorting to the hazardous chemicals used
in most existing treatment plants at competitive costs in today's
terms.

We have designed and built living
machines to grow food, to heat and cool buildings, to
bioremediate naturally occurring bodies of water and to treat
sewage, sludge, septage, and boat wastes.6 It is
possible to apply the same kind of biological engineering to the
production of high-quality biogas fuels. Living machines produce
byproducts that can be used in the manufacture of materials
ranging from paper products to advanced composite construction
materials. They can be linked together to form an engineered
ecology, a living technology that can be designed to protect and
restore natural environments and to support human communities.

All
phylogenetic levels from bacteria to vertebrates act as
control mechanisms

Disease
is controlled internally through competition, predation,
and antibiotic production

Through
application of medicines

Feedstock
both internal and external

Feedstocks
external

Modest
use of electrical and gaseous control inputs orchestrated
with environmental sensors and computer controls

Sophisticated
control engineering

Pollution

Pollution,
if occurs, is an indication of incomplete design

Pollution
intrinsically a by product; capture technologies need to
be added

Positive
environmental impact

Negative
or neutral environmental impact

Management
and Repair

Training
in biology and chemistry essential

Specialists
needed to maintain systems

Empathy
with systems may be a critical factor

Empathy
less essential

Costs

Capital
costs competitive with conventional systems

The
standard

Fuel
and energy costs low

Fuel
and energy costs high

Labor
costs probably analogous
- still to be determined

The
standard

Lower
pollution control cost

The
standard

Operation
costs lower because of reduced chemical and energy input

The
standard

Potential
reduction of social costs, in part because of potential
transferability to less industrialized regions and
countries

Social
costs can be high

Living machines are fundamentally different from both
conventional machines and standard biotechnologies. They
represent, in essence, the inherent intelligence of a forest or a
lake being applied to human ends through tasks that serve human
societies. Like natural ecosystems, they engage in a process of
self-design. They rely on biotic diversity for self-repair,
protection, and overall system efficiency. It is their aggregate
characteristic that most distinguishes living technologies,
however. People accustomed to the mechanical moving parts, the
noise or exhaust of internal combustion engines, or the silent
geometry of electronic devices often have difficulty imagining
living machines. Complex life forms viewed inside light-receptive
structures can seem at once familiar and bizarre. They are both
garden and machine, alive yet contained and framed living
technologies that bring people and nature together in radical and
transformative new relationships.

Much of the potential of living
machines to protect and enhance neighboring environments lies in
their photosynthetic base. Although secondary sources of energy
can be and are used for control and light augmentation, both the
unique adaptiveness and economic viability of living technologies
lie in their dependence on photosynthetically-based food chains.
They are built with parts that are themselves living populations,
often extremely diverse, comprised of hundreds of species. A
primary and key attribute is that the components will replace
themselves as they wear out. The life span of some populations
can be extraordinary, as long as centuries if housed in suitably
durable containers. Further, such systems have abilities to
respond and change with variations in inputs. They have the
ability to self-design. Although the task is established by the
human designer, when the living machine is left to express its
own complexity, it may develop biotic relationships unknown in
nature, thereby expanding its options for diversity. An
interesting example of self design occurred recently in a living
machine treating high-strength food wastes in a desert
environment when the computing controls regulating flows to the
system were knocked out. As a consequence, the volume of waste
entering the system exceeded the design capacity of the living
machine by a factor of ten for several days. The treatment
facility was overwhelmed with fats, oils, and grease. Many of the
organisms, including fish, were killed. The problem was
discovered on a Friday afternoon and the influent pumps were
stopped. Returning on the following Monday morning the plant
engineers were surprised to discover that the system had
self-repaired or healed itself, digested the mess of wastes, and
was ready to start in again treating new material. This was
possible because refugia or small side-streams had been designed
into the system. These provided habitats where organisms could
survive extreme conditions then re-invade and rapidly repopulate
the affected zones of the living machine. This process can occur
with surprising speed. We have observed a number of examples of
this dynamic aspect of ecologically engineered systems.

An important aspect of living
technologies, like natural systems in the wild, is that they are
pulse-driven. Daily, seasonal, and sporadic variations stamp
themselves deeply on their internal ecology. The background of
pulses creates the resilience, agility, and vigor necessary for
the systems to recover from external shocks, a response
impossible for conventional machines. Yet another essential
attribute is the presence of control species within the contained
ecosystems. These species orchestrate the overall ecology. The
building blocks behind the design, however, are the life
histories of the organisms. It is essential to graft the
evolution of living technologies onto a foundation of
wide-ranging knowledge of natural history. The world is a vast
repository of as yet unknown biological strategies that could
have immense relevance should we develop the science of
integrating the stories embedded in nature into the systems we
design to sustain societies. Conservationists and
preservationists rightly honor nature and struggle to protect the
pristine natural areas that remain to us. The survival of
civilization equally may require another fundamental step. It may
be essential for us to find ways of decoding the natural world
and of using its teachings to reshape and redefine our tools and
technologies. Good farmers and gardeners have long had this kind
of relationship with nature. With the unfolding and application
of ecology it is possible to extend this relationship into new
dimensions.

The development of living
technologies had to await not only the advent of ecology as a
discipline and source of knowledge but also the advancement of
materials sciences to the point at which energy-efficient and
environmentally responsive materials could be manufactured
cost-effectively. The containment vessels frequently use
light-weight, light-transmitting flexible materials that can be
bonded and waterproofed, or that be floated on top of aquatic
ecosystems.

Economically and energetically,
living machines make enormous sense. They are cost-competitive in
many areas of food growing and in purifying concentrated wastes.
By avoiding any use of hazardous chemicals, they can be designed
to be pollution-free in operation. It is anticipated that the
aesthetics of living technologies, in addition to their
functional and economic soundness, will hasten their acceptance.
They can be designed to be beautiful and evocative of the deep
harmonies found in nature. New economies that are an outgrowth of
the wisdom and resilience of the natural world would create a new
and hopeful dimension for the future.

Living machines need not be small
nor isolated from larger natural systems. Scale is not an
overriding factor as living technologies, like the natural world,
are made up of parts that are cellular in design. Each
subcomponent shares the universal attributes of organisms, namely
of autonomous components fused ingeniously into interdependent
associations that comprise the self-regulating whole. These
include such independent attributes of life as self-repair,
replication, feeding, and waste excretion dynamically balanced
with interdependent functions like gas, mineral, and nutrient
exchange. The same natural design principles that extend from the
cell to encompass all planetary biota allow living machines to
vary greatly in size. They have been designed for classroom use
to exhibit the functioning of ecosystems, and for treating
household wastes in containers comparable to appliances like an
average washing machine and dryer. So far the largest that we
have designed encompasses an area of seven hectares. Conceptual
projects include living machines for providing ultra-high-quality
drinking water for the city of Boston that would extend for 100
kilometers inside a greenhouse-covered canal.

Looking to the 21st century, the
potential contribution of living technologies is incalculable.
Although fossil fuels are necessary to manufacture the long-lived
materials of which the containers and mechanical parts are made,
they are not needed for ongoing use. Living machines are capable
of reintegrating wastes into larger systems and of breaking down
toxic materials or, in the case of metals, recycling them or
locking them up in centuries-long cycles. Living machines make it
possible to produce large amounts of food in urban or remote
areas and, as a result, could be part of a strategy for
addressing issues of inequity between peoples and regions. Some
less fertile parts of the world, like the semi-arid subtropics,
would benefit enormously as the tropics are the greatest
reservoirs for the necessary spare parts. By miniaturizing the
production of essential human services living technologies have
the further potential of releasing natural systems from human
abuse. This would free nature to continue to evolve in a wild
state, free from excessive human interference, greatly reducing
the human footprint on the ecology of the planet. This is
relevant in that the long-term survival of humanity may well be
predicated on a dramatic increase in the wilderness areas that
are the great repositories of the Earth's biological diversity
and evolutionary heritage.

The barriers to the transition
from an industrially based economy to a postindustrial ecological
economy are not as great as is generally assumed. Living-machine
technologies for food production pioneered by the New Alchemy
Institute in the 1970s are now widely employed in commercial food
production and some are multimillion dollar enterprises.7
Waste treatment technologies are evolving rapidly and are already
cost effective in many settings. When current environmental,
medical, and social costs are computed they are already adaptive
in a range of settings including tropical areas. Environmental
repair technologies for the restoration of lakes and polluted
waters are now more cost effective than alternatives.8
An additional and relevant attribute of living machines is that
they also can be added onto existing technologies to upgrade
performance and reduce pollution. In 1994 we installed a living
machine at the outfall of a secondary sewage treatment plant in
San Francisco. Its function is to upgrade the quality of the
water being discharged so that it can be resold and reused rather
than dumped into the ocean.

Living machines also can be
designed to reduce or eliminate hazardous emissions from
industrial manufacturing facilities. They can readily be
integrated into the infrastructures of contemporary societies.
Their potential to transform the visual landscape of the
industrial world has been portrayed in drawings by the architect
and visionary, Malcolm Wells.9

Ecological technologies have the
ability to transform the way we live and sustain ourselves. The
challenge lies in a dramatic rethinking of the human enterprise
in order to redesign it to fit the laws and the needs of the
natural world. Paul Hawken in The Ecology of Commerce
states the issue clearly: "To create an enduring society, we
will need a system of commerce and production where each and
every act is inherently sustainable and restorative. Business
will need to integrate economic, biologic and human systems to
create a sustainable method of commerce." He then goes on to
say quite appropriately: "As hard as we may try to become
sustainable on a company-by-company level, we cannot fully
succeed until the institutions surrounding commerce are
redesigned.''10 Ecology provides the foundation and
living technologies the infrastructure for such redesign.

3 This is best represented by the
new living machine for sewage treatment de signed by Ocean Arks
International and engineered by Living Technologies Inc. at
Frederick, Maryland. It is a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
facility for the demonstration of ecologically engineered
technologies.